


A Place to Start

by tuesday



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Zombies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 02:20:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20574839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: It was Orochimaru's fault.





	A Place to Start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alpha_Trickster_Kat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alpha_Trickster_Kat/gifts).

It was Orochimaru's fault.

Of course it was Orochimaru's fault. Orochimaru was always causing shit. Back when they'd been genin, Tsunade had thought it was always Jiraiya's fault, but while Jiraiya was a troublemaker, Orochimaru was on another level entirely, as evidenced by the majority of their adult lives. He'd gotten into worse _without_ Jiraiya, and wasn't that a trip? Jiraiya had actually somehow been a moderating influence. Maybe if he'd stuck around the village—

Then again, it's not like Tsunade had, either.

Tsunade didn't want this to be her fault. It wasn't her fault. Who could have guessed that Orochimaru's approach to Jiraiya's death would be so ridiculously, terribly stupid? He'd always wanted to master immortality and bring back his parents. She thought he'd gotten over that. Instead, after Pain and then after the war, his target shifted. He was a genius, and he was a madman, and Orochimaru actually did it, pulled back the veil of death and, without using Tobirama's cursed jutsu, snatched something back.

Too bad that something wasn't Jiraiya. 

Tsunade was too old for this. All three of them were too old for this. She almost envied Jiraiya his death by a student's hands. At least he was dead and this wasn't his problem.

"Like you wouldn't have been the first to use it if it had worked," Orochimaru said.

"I think I proved that years ago," Tsunade said. Her voice was tired. Her shoulders were slumped. This shouldn't be her responsibility. She'd passed on the damn hat. Was this how Hiruzen-sensei had felt? She didn't want it anymore. She had never wanted it in the first place.

"If we keep trying, we can cure this," Orochimaru said. "We can still bring them back." Unspoken were the words, _I can still bring him back._

Tsunade heard them anyway. "Stop, Orochimaru. Just. Stop."

But Orochimaru wouldn't stop. Orochimaru couldn't stop. Even when he'd promised, it just wasn't in his nature, always reaching higher, always going further, until half the world was overrun with the walking dead, uncontrolled by any seals this time, and a monster in Jiraiya's body sat in a cage in Orochimaru's shiny new lab as testament to where the outbreak had started.

"I can fix this," Orochimaru said, quiet, so sure of himself.

Orochimaru would never stop, so Tsunade made him stop.

—

It didn't fix the world. There was no going back to how things were. But it was a place to start. Tsunade's whole life seemed like an exercise in rebuilding sometimes.

Straightening the hokage's hat, Tsunade looked forward.


End file.
